McCombs EMBA Again Ranked Top 10, Excellent Value

The Texas Executive MBA Program is ranked ninth in the world according to Poets & Quants for Executives’ second annual EMBA ranking. McCombs debuted at ninth last year among North American schools. This year’s ranking combined programs from around the world into one global listing.

The top three global contenders were the same as last year’s top-three North American programs: Wharton heads the list of the 55 schools, followed closely by the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Only three public schools cracked the top 10: UCLA (6), Michigan (7) and McCombs. The former two schools traded ranks with each other from last year.

In a slideshow of the Poets and Quants’ ranking, CNN Money / Fortune magazine calls McCombs an “unqualified bargain” and points out that the Texas EMBA is the only program among the top 10 with a price tag under six figures.

CNN Money reports that Wharton’s West Coast program in San Francisco currently sets students back $173,940 (fall 2011). Tuition at Chicago’s Booth School of Business is priced at $148,000 while Northwestern’s tallies to $159,000. Even a public contender such as Michigan charges non-residents $136,000. UCLA's bill, reasonable by comparison at $113,661, is still a far cry from McCombs’ $85,000.

“This confirms that The University of Texas at Austin is one of the best values in business education anywhere in the world,” said Dean Thomas W. Gilligan. “The McCombs School of Business has one of the lowest tuitions among elite business schools, including undergraduate, full-time MBA and executive programs."

Poets & Quants for Executives first appeared in March 2011 as an online one-stop shop for prospective EMBA students. Its mastermind, John A. Byrne, previously an executive editor at BusinessWeek, was responsible for launching that magazine’s influential MBA rankings more than two decades ago.

Unlike other ranking institutions, Poets & Quants assesses the overall reputation of EMBA programs not with a new survey, but by averaging together the four latest ratings of EMBA programs by Bloomberg Businessweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. The programs are assigned an index score and ordered from top to bottom. For more information, see our methodology pages.